Note: To those of you that are aware of the background of our relationship with Rajiv Malhotra, we would like to reiterate our commitment to protecting our Dharma from all forms of attacks and hence this piece finds an unhesitating place on our platform.

Richard Fox Young is a Christian propagandist affiliated with the obscurantist Princeton Theological Seminary.

Andrew Nicholson is the author of Unifying Hinduism: Philosophy and Identity in Indian Intellectual History. Young and Nicholson have leveled the scurrilous allegation of plagiarism against Rajiv Malhotra, scholar and author of numerous books and articles including Breaking India: Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines, Indra’s Net: Defending Hinduism’s Philosophical Unity, and Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism.

They allege that in Indra’s Net, Malhotra has plagiarized from Nicholson’s book. This is quite a ridiculous allegation because Malhotra cites and references Nicholson numerous times in his book. A plagiarizer wouldn’t do that.

Besides, in an example that Young cites, both Malhotra and Nicholson discuss Vijñānabhikṣu’s theory that one attains mōkṣa by two paths. They use different words and phrases to summarize it. In one path the practitioner attains knowledge through Sāṁkhya and Vēdānta but has to endure the intervening state of embodiment known as jīvanmukti. In the other, mōkṣa is attained immediately through the practice of Yōga.

Richard Fox Young

Vijñānabhikṣu’s theory is well-known in Hindu philosophy. It is not Nicholson’s invention.Malhotra has every right to present the theory in his own words.Why should he credit a contemporary westerner while summarizing a medieval Hindu philosophical theory?

It is dishonest to characterize Malhotra’s reasonable approach as plagiarism. Vishal Agarwal points out that Nicholson’s phrases eerily resemble those of the Indian philosopher Sunrendranath Dasgupta, who wrote on the same subject decades before Nicholson did. However, Nicholson does not credit his Indian sources.

Now, unless Nicholson is well-versed in Saṃskṛta and had gleaned his knowledge without relying upon Dasgupta, one could allege that Nicholson possibly plagiarized Dasgupta.

Other examples of this alleged plagiarism are equally frivolous and unworthy of further discussion. However, one must ask why Malhotra has been the target of this scurrilous campaign.

Hinduism was continually pilloried under the British-Christian colonial rule. Hindus were constantly reminded that their culture is inferior and that their redemption lay in embracing Christianity. Post-independence, India’s leftists, English media, and the Bollywood imitated the erstwhile colonial masters in the derogatory portrayal of Hinduism.

Christian missionaries and a section of western academics manufactured the tropes that were conveniently leveraged in this portrayal. American academics such as Paul Courtright relied upon pseudoscientific psychoanalysis to claim that Ganēśa “remains celibate so as not to compete erotically with his father, a notorious womanizer, either incestuously for his mother or for any other woman for that matter.”

Andrew Nicholson

The anthropologist and racist Stanley Kurtz claimed that Indian women do not love their children as much as western women love theirs. He attributed goddess worship in Hinduism to an allegedly pathological incestuous tendency among the Hindus and derogatorily called it the “Durga Complex.”

This kind of racism and anti-Hindu bias was matched by thorough incompetency. The alleged Hinduism expert and daughter of a Christian fanatic, Wendy Doniger, translates the Ŗgvēda verse ‘aja eka pada’ as ‘the one footed goat’ whereas, as Professor Antonio de Nicolos points out, it means ‘the unmanifest one foot measure of music present in the geometries without forms.’

Doniger translated it as ‘the one footed goat’ because ‘aja’ in Hebrew means goat. Pathetic is too mild a word to describe the quality of Doniger’s scholarship. (See Invading the Sacred – An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America, pp. 53-70).

Very few western academics spoke up against this incompetency and anti-Hindu bias prevalent in the Western academia. Instead, these incompetent academics were given the mandate to impose strident anti-Hindu messages in textbooks read by teenagers.

Indian leftists, the powerful among whom owe their academic positions to their political connections and a shameful legacy of having been ‘pillow-dictionaries’ (ask Doniger what it means!) to their western mentors, imitated their white masters in portraying Hinduism and Indian culture in the most derogatory terms while simultaneously sanitizing the portrayals of Christianity and Islam.

This kind of portrayal served an important purpose: putting Hindus incessantly on the defensive and facilitating Christian proselytism. Any Hindu tendency of assertiveness (for example, the raise of Hindutva) was condescendingly dismissed as fascist.

The meteoric rise in Christian conversions as evidenced by the mushrooming of western-funded churches in India testifies to the efficacy of anti-Hindu tropes. Leftist and Christian NGOs, as recipients of billions of dollars of western funding annually, acted as the vectors of anti-Hindu campaign. In Indian schools, a coalition of Christians, leftists, and Dravidianists forced children to sing chauvinistic songs (nīrārum kaḍaluḍutta) that declared that other languages emerged from the spit of one’s own. The same coalition imposed demagogic poetry (e.g., Irāvaṇa Kāviyam), which denigrated the Hindu divinity Śri Rāma. In places like the JNU, leftists blocked the teaching of Saṃskṛta.

Many Hindu thinkers such as Chattampi Swami, M. K. Gandhi, Swami Vivekananda, Jayakanthan, Sitaram Goel, Koenraad Elst, and S. N. Balagangadhara understood how these portrayals weaken and destroy Hindu culture and society. They voiced their opinions and paved the way for Hindu assertiveness. They inspired a new generation of Hindus. A Hindu needn’t be a submissive native informant. He could actually talk back. Or, she could play a pivotal role in launching the probe to Mars.

It is in this category of Hindu thinkers that Malhotra belongs. He analyzed the anti-Hindu bias in the academy and understood how it percolates to every level of society. He engaged in polemical but scholarly debates and wrote well-researched books and articles. He had one significant advantage that his predecessors didn’t: social media. He used it to the fullest. In a matter of few years, he could build a sizeable following which was ready to reverse the gaze on the West and talk back. And damn it, they weren’t willing to be ‘pillow dictionaries’ and catalog brides for aging western academics. More importantly, he brought the important element of management to his campaign to make it effective.

How can the well-entrenched, prejudiced Western academia tolerate this? Does the brown sepoy not realize his place? How dare the ‘penis-worshiper’ invoke the weird-sounding pūrva pakṣa to scrutinize the ‘religion of love’ rather than be grateful to the white man? Why does this ‘hyphenated’ American not behave like Bobby Jindal or Michelle Malkin?

Rajiv Malhotra

That should’ve been sufficient to skin Malhotra alive but he is guilty of something worse: his messages resonated with many Hindus, especially the urban youth, and ironically, with a section of westerners as well. His admirers perceived his messages as being moderate. He successfully contrasted the inclusive, flexible, and invigorating Hindu worldview with the exclusive, obscurantist, and repulsive Christian worldview. He effectively argued that there is no substantive difference between the Western left and the right. Both are birds of the same feather and flock together to feed on the Hindu carrion. The message was beginning to sink.

Malhotra had to be brought down, if necessary with a scurrilous campaign of lies. That should be okay because there is no biblical commandment against lying. It is a pity that Christian missionaries like Young cannot burn Malhotra at the stake as good Christians used to during the glorious days of witch-hunts.

How sad that they cannot regale their leftist minions with the helpless cries that Malhotra would have uttered while he is burnt alive! All they could do was to defame him. Sigh!

What can Hindus do though? They can begin with counting the number of prominent Christians that stood up and supported Malhotra when it mattered. How many academics came to his defense? Almost none, right? If this didn’t inform the Hindu about the need to fight one’s own battle, nothing would.

Think for a moment what motivated Christian demagogues to act unscrupulously. You would find the answer in their religious conditioning. Christianity binds the believers together by projecting a permanent external enemy. Unlike dharma-based religions, Christianity doesn’t have morals or philosophy. All it has is a hunger for lebensraum-seeking aggrandizement. Anyone that talks back rather than acquiesce is projected as the enemy to be destroyed. Here, Malhotra displayed the audacity to talk back and reverse the gaze. So, the beast had to be marked for destruction!

There is only one way to respond to this kind of unscrupulous, brutal aggression: by refusing to back down. As a sign of solidarity, buy Malhotra’s books and read them. Hindus must learn to talk back, and even mock if necessary. Remember that Malhotra was targeted for defending Hinduism.

So, next time when someone mocks Hinduism or its divinities remember who invented and sustained the trope. It is the Christians. So, respond by mocking Jesus, the Bible, and Christianity. You don’t even need pseudoscience to portray Jesus as incestuous or the Virgin Mary as adulterous. Early Christian sources provide enough ammunition that you can simply cite verbatim.

Every time ajá ékapāt shows up in th Rgveda (5x) the referent is áhi budhnyà the primordial serpent at the bottom of the ocean. Another thought is perhaps it is the world tree around which the serpent is coiled (and thus the association).

This suggests to me neither Doniger nor de Nicolo are correct. It is clearly one-footed because the entire body of the snake is its ‘leg,’ aja could mean either unborn ‘timeless’ or it could still mean ‘goat’ but metaphorically in dimensions we don’t understand because no one understands Rgvedic sacrifice (we understand the sacrifice according to the śrautasūtras which are a millennium later) Sanskrit ajakarṇa ‘goat-ear’ refers to a tree or termite mount, as does ajapāla ‘goat-herd’ refer to a tree. For this reason perhaps it refers to the world tree around which the serpent is wound.

countermand

I take issue with this claim:

“This kind of racism and anti-Hindu bias was matched by thorough incompetency. The alleged Hinduism expert and daughter of a Christian fanatic, Wendy Doniger, translates the Ŗgvēda verse ‘aja eka pada’ as ‘the one footed goat’ whereas, as Professor Antonio de Nicolos points out, it means ‘the unmanifest one foot measure of music present in the geometries without forms.”

The first fallacy is that Doniger’s background somehow precludes her from making a good translation and can only act out of some Christian fanaticism. That’s a very selectively applied logic isn’t it? The fact is in Vedic, aja does mean ‘goat’ now perhaps ‘the one footed goat’ is a metaphor for something else, like music, that is something that should be proven with robust analysis of the texts themselves and not merely asserted ad hoc. However de Nicolos reading is false, at least from the perspective of Vedic (reception by later generations is a different topic) as ‘unmanifest/unborn’ would be ajā. Ŗgvēda does not shorten the last ā vowel of the root jā/jani, as it would in later Classical Sanskrit. So, it is likely ‘goat’ (no doubt with metaphorical dimensions however these are not explicit in this syntagm). This is not odd, because cows, sheep, and horses also are used in metaphorical and metonymy dimensions in Vedic. Regardless, its not the case that this is Doniger’s importation from Hebrew, that’s wishful thinking on your part. You want to make a strong point, stick to the facts and double check your claims or else you are as reckless as the most reckless Western scholar.

SU

Where does the plagiarism allegation against Sanjeev Sanyal made by someone we know figure in this discussion on plagiarism? 😉

SUNNY

All that Hindus need to understand that west is extremely selfish and sutle .They are also very strategic the entire force that is the Academcians/Media / the business / Church & the Government they all move in Unison to out maneuavre the opponant .

Indians have never understood this and also we are stupid except BJP and few other parties like BJD and AIDMK rest all parties are so cheap they will not hesitate to sell their own mothers .

It is time that Business leaders of India start thinking strategically and prop up or ancient religion.

Christians have billions and billions in their warchest Islam gets from oil rich Muslim countries

All indic religions like Hinduism/ Buddhism/Jainism & Sikhism should join hands and right together to finish off these proselytizing religions

LK Kandpal

We need more kshatriyas to defeat the designs of the evil forces.

Vineet Menon

>You don’t even need pseudoscience to portray Jesus as incestuous or the Virgin Mary as adulterous.
Unfortunately when I do that, people call me names.. 🙁

Jaya

What does it say about the standard of western universities like the University of Chicago if such terrible scholarship like Wendy Doniger’s is not only allowed to flourish but such horrendous supposed ‘scholars’ set the standards of a teaching department. Does it not make the stds of western universities now suspect? at least to start with in these areas?

Shubhangi Raykar

Read something written by you after a long time. You have done a great job as usual. I have finished writing on Nirbhaya etal. It is in Marathi. Let me find a publisher. The tactics used by the fraudulent missionaries turned indologists are not new.

Rohit Kanji

“Now, unless Nicholson is well-versed in Saṃskṛta and had gleaned his knowledge without relying upon Dasgupta, one could allege that Nicholson possibly plagiarized Dasgupta.”

Nicholson says in his book that translations from Sanskrit sources are his own unless he explicitly states otherwise. If Nicholson copied translation of Surendranath Dasgupta and did not acknowledge, then Nicholson is deliberately presenting that material as his own translation. Nicholson is clearly guilty of plagiarism.

पूर्णमदः

> Doniger translated it as ‘the one footed goat’ because ‘aja’ in Hebrew means goat.

अज also means ‘goat’ in Sanskrit. Please change.

Kalavai Venkat

I knew of ‘Ᾱja’ and ‘ajā’ but didn’t realize this form existed in the RV. Does it? Regardless, Doniger’s translation was erroneous as explained.

पूर्णमदः

Ah, I see. That I don’t know.

Jishnu

A few dots that may or may not connect –

The best commentary of RV comes from Yajurveda (Taittiriya 1.3.3) where these names are explained as the 16 forms of Agni (8 mobile and 8 stationary fires) – vibhUrasi pravAhaNa… ajosyekapAd, ahirasi budhniya. Here it seems to mean the unborn and singular support (of existence). Besides, aja ekapad is always seen as a form of Rudra and Baudhayana’s Mahanyasa associates these 16 forms with 16 limbs of body. In the astronomical sense aja-ekapad form is associated with the star pUrva bhAdra (under mesha constellation). Agni-mesha association is very much in RV itself (so not very unlikely even with aja).

Kalavai Venkat

Very good observations.

countermand

aja does mean goat, it’s just that ‘goat’ has metaphorical dimensions which do not surface in the translation (but no doubt in endnotes at the end of the book not presented here). typically in Vedic, the paśus (aja, go, aśva, and avi for example) are used to categorize the world. So this chandas = paśu = varna, etc. That is not probably what is meant here, simply I am saying that its not unusual to see ‘goat’ in a Vedic verse because they are expressive tools of metonymy and metaphor for a population that is largely pastoral at this time.

countermand

Every time ajá ékapāt shows up in th Rgveda (5x) the referent is áhi budhnyà the primordial serpent at the bottom of the ocean or possibly it is the world around which the ahi is coiled. I think Doniger and de Nicolo are not looking at the total context, which is how these two words are being used everywhere in the text. I include the citations here:

This suggests to me neither Doniger nor de Nicolo are correct. It is clearly one-footed because the entire body of the snake is its ‘leg,’ aja could mean either unborn ‘timeless’ or it could still mean ‘goat’ but metaphorically in dimensions we don’t understand because no one understands Rgvedic sacrifice (we understand the sacrifice according to the śrautasūtras which are a millennium later) Sanskrit ajakarṇa ‘goat-ear’ refers to a tree or termite mount, as does ajapāla ‘goat-herd’ refer to a tree. For this reason perhaps it refers to the world tree around which the serpent is wound.

Ranjith

Venkat proves that gone are those days, when a typical Hindu will simply turn his head away and goes away when some one criticizes him. This is really a very nice and aggressive critique of the West from which every Hindu should learn. Hope you will provide us some more ammunition to fight back like Rajiv have been doing.

पूर्णमदः

What exactly is this ‘relationship’ that RM has with Indiafacts ?

Ramesh

aja does mean goat as also unborn. Aja does not mean goat in hebrew. Goat in Hebrew is EZ.

Kalavai Venkat

The difference is between ‘aja’ on one hand and ‘Ᾱja’ and ‘ajā’ on the other. I have a suspicion that Doniger cannot read Dēvanāgarī and hence relied on a transliterated text without proper diacritical marks. As a result, the Ŗgvēda unexpectedly acquired a one-legged goat. 🙂

Radha Rajan

Hehehehe.

KC

Well put, Venkat. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Sri Rajiv Malhotra’s ideas and findings are” Very powerful and Thought provoking”.
They give a Clarion Call to all Indians for Freedom 2.0 – A Freedom for “Indian Thinking” and its Right to be “Heard”.

“Right to Expression” alone is NOT enough, its actually meaningless if
your Voice is not “heard” in the West Controlled Academia and Media
Globally.
“Right to be Heard” is the way Forward ! We mus earn that Right !

Krispy K

In my view, the objective is not to indulge the Western controlled academia and media or force them to see things from our point of view, it is to uproot it completely and replace their global narrative with our own. I feel that is the proper way to erode whatever fraudulent relevance they have established. There are many steps to be taken in order to achieve that.

Rudra Narasimham Rebbapragada

I may not have time to read books published by Rajiv Malhotra but I read his views on several issues. I may not always agree with his findings or analysis of information from Hindu Scriptures. I do not support these allegations and I commend Rajiv Malhotra for his academic work and professional integrity and thank him for his tireless contributions to expose prejudice and intolerance of Hindu thought.

prashants5 .

>> I may not always agree with his findings or analysis of information from Hindu Scriptures.

You will only disagree to his findings if you have carried extensive research on your own and have your own findings. I don’t know who you are but just saying you don’t agree to him , doesn’t make any sense unless you present your own findings ( that has substance) in public domain and accept an academic debate. RM doesn’t tell us goodie goodie stories or some fairy tales…He says with references and findings with ample evidences.

Krispy K

Of course Rajiv’s interpretations are his own and open to differing points of view. That’s normal. But as you say his academic work is invaluable in fighting the Western grip on the global consciousness that has cause so much harm and not just to Indians.

What we need to establish is precisely the global platform where those who are qualified to do so may discuss various viewpoints on Hindu thought without pollution from ignorant Western bullshitters and their petty political agendas. Re-establishing Dharmic “hegemony” over the global narrative on morals, ethics, values, society, spirituality etc. is not just essential for India, but for humanity as a whole.

prashants5 .

Dear Author,

Why didn’t you provide the Screen-shot from the Pages 326,328 and 329 of “Indra’s Net”, which contains 30 references and acknowledgement to Nicholoson’s work ( with prior permission from the Author or Publisher )?

This way the readers who are not aware of “Indra’s Net” or RM, will clearly understand how this Western Payroll based Scholar Richard Fox and associates are Lying and so are others. At least this will make clear to the regular readers who don’t usually put enough effort to dig into the subject but make their judgement reading the headlines.

On the other-hand to diffuse this false allegations ( as it is projected), keep highlight “Indra’s Net” not RM on its entirety.

Refusing to back down is merely the start. Talking back and mocking is only half of it. Hindus must start to realise that one must be prepared to take the fight to the enemy and destroy them by any means necessary. Talking has only a limited utility with barbarians – sometimes fighting fire with fire is unavoidable.

Praveen Hegde

I totally agree with you.. we must think and act like krishna suggestion to finish Karna even though he may be good or bad.. but supporting Bad is very bad if he knew its bad..

Sekhars

Richard is a real Fox in true sense.

Kanagaraj Easwaran

Hit where it hurts. Yes hitting back has already started its momentum also increases.